Before My Eyes (23 page)

I stroke King's thick fur. I stare into his eyes even though he can't see me. He knows I'm there and I'm his friend.

“That's okay,” I say, running my fingers between his ears. “He remembers me. He's a good dog.”

The dog lurches toward Max, whipping his tail, sniffing and grinning, if dogs could grin. “Sometimes. He's a smart dog. You're a smart mutt, aren't you? You didn't eat anything in that food dish, did you?”

King looks back to his dish. The entire room smells like dog food. He strokes King, but the way the dog is rubbing his head up and down Max's leg, it's almost like the dog is petting him.

“You like dogs?” asks Max.

“I do, not that I have one. I've always wanted one. My mother always said I could have one when I was old enough to take care of a dog. This summer, I proved I could take care of a lot more, so maybe I should ask for a puppy?”

“Be prepared. Puppies are a lot of work.”

“Maybe I'll hold off. It's been a really long summer at our house.”

“Here too,” says Max.

King presses into me, as if sensing my sadness. He licks my hand. My father didn't want me to go out tonight. He wanted us all to watch a movie together. But I couldn't stay. I couldn't watch another old movie. I've been trapped in the house all summer. I had to get out, and I remember, I really did want to see Brent.

Max grabs King's collar. “Kneel, King. Kneel.”

The dog listens to him.

“Are you sure you don't know a Brent?” I ask again, crossing my arms. “He's twenty-one?”

Max doesn't look at me. He fusses with King. “Maybe I'd know him if I saw him. I know a lot of people. So maybe he'll show up, which means, maybe you should stay?”

I shrug and bend to scratch King's ears.

“At least, can you help me out? Take King outside while I get the drinks? He's not really allowed in the house. My parents will kill me if they come home and see him running around.” Dimples appear on each side of his face, shy and sweet.

“I think I should go home, Max. I had something weird happen today.” And suddenly I'm telling him about my mother, and he's losing his smile, losing his dimples, and he's serious, listening as if deep in thought about what I'm saying. His dog curls at my legs. I slump against the white-white walls, no cabbage-flowered wallpaper here.

After a few minutes of me talking, he says, “I've got to admit it, you did have a long summer.”

“You have a nice house,” I say, not wanting to talk any more about me. Cathedral ceilings and black leather couches and glass-and-chrome tables, everything is shiny and sleek, unlike my house. My skin prickles. This house is cool enough for a sweater. I look out the high windows at the other houses on the block with their cathedral ceilings and perfect cut lawns. I don't think Max ever had to worry about “insurance,” or electric bills, or money for gas for a ten-year-old minivan.

“Aren't you glad your mom is home?” he asks.

“I am, but my father should have warned me, don't you think? He still sees me as a kid. If I had known she was coming home, I could have prepared. I could have cooked a nice dinner or done the laundry or dusted or vacuumed one more time. I could have shown her that I'm not a kid anymore. What do you think, Max?”

“You do all those things?” Max eases out a small laugh. But I'm not laughing with him. He can think it's all not cool. He can think I'm not pretty. He can think that this girl should go back to South Lakeshore—that she doesn't belong here. He can even pretend he doesn't know me or look right through me like so many others, if he sees me on the street or in the park. I know I did the best I could to keep it all together this summer.

“I do all those things. How about that?” I say, challenging him to continue, even though I'm feeling drained and exhausted.

Instead, he says, “Down, King, down,” as if I mind that his dog is near me. When King obeys, Max kneels and nuzzles him. I bury my head in his black fur, too, a smell of grass and earth and warm dog. We are not hugging each other, but we are both hugging the dog.

Too soon, we hear voices, and it's like we are underwater, and the voices are muddy and far away, mermaids singing to us. Max pulls back first, but he's looking at me, seeing me—smiling with dimples.

Barkley

Sunday, 9:30
P.M.

I am dressed: navy blue sweatshirt and sweatpants smelling of laundry detergent, of chemicals. I prefer the gray set I have been wearing all summer. Nevertheless, she selected the navy blue for me, and I will wear this if it helps her.

She paces in the hallway, on her smartphone. When she is farthest from me, I slip the Glock tight inside the pocket of my hooded sweatshirt.

“Barkley, we need to talk, okay?” she says, sliding the device into its holster at her waist. “Everything a little better now? Nice to be in clean clothes, am I correct? Looks like you're going out? Seeing friends? It would be great to know that you're seeing friends. Are you? I'd rather you be doing anything than playing those games. Are you listening? I called your doctor. We want to have you evaluated, and we're going to start with your pediatrician, okay? I'm calm now, don't I sound calm? Exactly, my doctor gave me a prescription to help me through—and I am sure that there will be something to help you, too.”

I pat my sweatshirt down flat in the front and test a grin on her: wet my lips, open my mouth, show teeth.

“Why are you looking at me with that odd expression? Everything will be okay. You'll see. With the right strategy, we can get this all back on track.”

You know what you want to do. What you must do.

“What do I smell?” she asks, sniffing the air. “Do I smell cigarette smoke on you? You know your father and I are going to be very disappointed if you've taken up that filthy habit. Please be truthful with me. You're not all of a sudden starting to smoke, are you? Dr. Hazel is not going to be happy hearing this.”

Dr. Hazel always gave me a toy after an exam. The last time was a high-flying mini-ball. I was seventeen, getting a physical for that community college. I did not want to see her at seventeen, and I will not see her now. I am perfectly fine. I liked the ball, though.

My mother trails me down the hallway. “I think we should call your father together. I'm getting him on the phone now.”

At the front door, she sprints in front of me. She pushes her smartphone toward me. Manicured fingernails tap my cheek. I grab her hand and jerk it away from my right lobe. My father shouts at me from across the country, high-pitched, upbeat. “Barkley, you're an awesome kid. We trust you. But we think you may need a little help.”

They have made a pact against me.

“What's changed with you, buddy? Something's changed, hasn't it? You were always a phenomenal kid. I know this is just a minor setback. We are going to take this on together.”

I shove the phone away. It clatters out of her hand, bangs to the floor—my father keeps on chattering—and I am engulfed by the airless night. She dives after the phone, calling out to me, “When are you going to be home? We need to plan some family time together.”

Walk perfectly.
The voice understands. This isn't Kate and Dan's story. There is no longer a “we” in this family.

*   *   *

I head over to the party. Hike from the main street into a patch of woods. Here there is an actual hiking trail, which edges the backyards of a dozen houses, approximately a half acre from the house to the trail. His house is one of the few without a high fence separating the wide yard from the trees. Lights are trained on the expansive deck.

I have stood out here in the dark before. Once, in high school, I brought along Scotch and pot for the soccer team. We got drunk and stoned. They chased me through the trees. I tripped. They tore off my sneakers. My parents never asked me why I needed new sneakers right away or what happened to the old.

Tonight, I pull out a pack of cigarettes and light one. Drag hard. I blow out smoke. Fire. Am pure. I no longer want to join the party. Now, I need to be here for Claire. I must warn her about Max and the pills. He could be sharing them with her. She must not harm herself.

I smoke, hiding the tip in the cup of my hand. I shake out my scarred arms. The trees stir with traces of autumn, of the end of things. They close in around me. Overhead, my old sneakers dangle.

Trish and Peter linger on the deck, as if they lived on this end of town. No sign of Claire. An old maple shields me from their sight. Sap runs on my hand. I light another cigarette with the half-finished first. I wish I had my sunglasses with me, even though they would be useless in the dark.

Glass doors slide open. A dog crashes out onto the deck, barking, bashing into legs and chairs. A big, dumb dog. I step back. I suck the cigarette down to its bitter, burning end. Light another.

The world will soon enough know morning. Your morning.

FOCUS ON:
Claire stepping out swinging a bottle of water at her side and bringing it up to her full lips.

CLOSE-UP:
Eyes. lips. Her swan-like throat.

I pull back. Of course, she is only drinking from that plastic since it is Max's house, Glenn Cooper's house. She is not at fault. The state senator is. Her lips wrap around the water bottle. She must be thirsty, gulping the water down, her chest rising. A trickle runs down her chin, and she laughs, wiping it off with the back of her hand. Her palm is white, white against the summer-browned skin. She sips more, glancing toward the trees. I stand still, invisible to her. She is innocent, a poet, in need of me, in need of me to act, of Brent to act. Yet Max is intent on her. He does not know her like I know her. It is hard to swallow. I need more coffee. More fire. Another cigarette. Claire.

I stumble. Scrape my palm against the trunk of a tree. Heads on the deck turn. Search the dark and see nothing, or what they want to see: nothing.

I sink to the ground. My knuckles grind the dirt: rocky, leafy, and bone-dry. An earthworm slides through my fingers, sightless. I cannot hurt it. I want to scream out for Claire. And I want to scream: help me. But she cannot see me weak and alone. I claw at the dirt. I smoke through the pack, sucking in fire after fire, cleansing myself. My eyes blur. She is far off, a distant ship in the moon's glare. What do they—Claire, Max, Trish, Peter—Barkley—fear? What do we all fear? A dog barks. My body tenses. Thoughts spring into my mind but cannot fit a pattern. The pine scent seeps into my skin. An owl hoots. I pull out the Glock from inside my sweatshirt. The Glock is sweet and cold and ready.

Claire

Sunday, 9:45
P.M.

So I stay. I kick a soccer ball to King. After a second of listening, sniffing, he chases after the ball, nosing it back toward me. Peter thinks this is the best thing in the world and asks if he can join. Fireflies light around us. We run in pools of dim backyard lights, the woods dark behind us.

Soon all of us—Max, Trish, Peter, and I—are kicking the ball in a mock soccer game. King gallops from person to person, the happiest dog I've ever seen. Peter snaps the ball hard and wide, off to the side and the shadows. Trish lumbers after it, cursing under her breath in a friendly way. Peter keeps saying he sees lights, red dots off in the woods.

“Only fireflies,” I say to him. I've always loved the woods at night.

Max yells, “Be careful, Trish, there's poison ivy over there.” She laughs and says, “Don't worry. I'm thick-skinned.”

The ball soars back to us. Trish has a strong kick. Max stops it with the tip of his shoe, controls it, and lobs it over to me.

As a kid, I always just liked open fields. In second or third grade when I played soccer, I ran with my hair flying behind me, faster than anyone else. A wonder, my mother always said. I never really learned to handle the ball, not like Max, and by fifth grade I was too self-conscious of my body, which was starting to change almost overnight, and I stopped running. By sixth grade, I had quit soccer altogether.

In high school, through the windows of the school library, I liked to watch our varsity soccer team practice. The game itself—the green fields, the long runs, the ball arcing the field—is a game of grace.

If I had gone to an actual game, I might have seen Max play. Our high schools have a major rivalry in sports. But I never went to see the soccer team or any school team compete. That was the role of other girls. All of a sudden, in the middle of Max's backyard, I realize how much I had put myself in a box, let others define me. This year, I decide, I'll go to a game, even if I have to take Izzy with me. Maybe Brent will go, too.

“Are you hogging the ball?” calls out Max. I know he's just happy to have me stick around because no one else is showing up. It doesn't even look like Brent is coming. He's probably got the word like all the others that this wasn't the place to be.

I tap the ball over to Peter, who howls, joyfully, chasing it in his work boots. An owl hoots from somewhere in the trees and another responds, as if refereeing our game. I race from one end of the yard to another like I have wings on my back. I feel eyes on me, a strange feeling, and I turn, and there's Max, kicking the soccer ball back to me.

Fireflies whip around us like they're playing defense. A whiff of pine needles and apples, a wild scent, wanders over the newly cut grass. Clouds, wisps of gray, rub across the moon, haloing our short field. I feel caught in another time, a time before my mother's stroke, a time when I didn't have to think of taking care of other people, of dinner, or dirty dishes, or laundry, when I didn't have to think of anything except running up and down green fields.

Max

Sunday, 10:00
P.M.

So she stays, and so do Trish and Peter. We play soccer and drink more beer, and I'm not feeling much pain in my back, or anywhere else. Nobody else shows up. Even so, I don't feel like I need anyone else, or to be anywhere else.